Monday, July 22, 2013

Craziest Dream I've Ever Had

This was what I dreamt before my alarm went off at 4:45 this morning, prodding me out of bed to go open the coffee shop. Before hopping in the shower, I jotted down some key elements so I wouldn't forget this one. And no, it doesn't mean anything, haha. What's interesting to me is looking back at the dream, and thinking about how many things made perfect sense as I was dreaming them, but make very little sense in the retelling. I also feel like this would make an excellent movie. And, of course, I promise this is exactly what I dreamt, with no embellishment. No kidding.

I'm in a spaceship with one other person. We're going to a space station, having just launched from the surface of a planet. We're going up there to do maintenance on the cryogenic systems. For some reason, my fellow repairman instantly gets into his cryogenic unit upon arriving at the space station. This is one of those things that I accepted without question at the time.

The freezer room is about the size of a small coffee shop, with waist-high freezers filling the room, sort of like the ice cream freezers you see in convenient stores; they're roughly that shape and size. The interior of the space station is dark blue and black, with plenty of enormous screens in the walls and lots of red lights all over the place.

I can't recall what specifically I was trying to fix, but I needed an allen key (or hex key) to do so. Yes. We're far in the future, and still using those types of tools, apparently. Anyhow, there's a door in the space station that leads, naturally, to the garage in my house in Erie. Once in my garage, I rummage around in my personal tool box (which doesn't exist in real life), and find something like three sets of allen keys all dumped helter-skelter into the box. I grab 4 different sizes, because I'm not sure which key will fit the nut in the cryogenic chamber, and I don't want to have to come back out to the garage.

I leave my garage and go back inside the space station. (I love that that's a perfectly reasonable thing to have happen in a dream.)

So. Once inside, I realize it would be cool if my friend Kristina would like to come visit while I'm fixing the freezers. I give her a call, and she says she'll be on her way shortly. I guess she has her own space ship.

But there's a problem. One of the enormous screens on the walls has started counting down. I realize that even though I'm not actually inside a cryogenic chamber, I'm about to be frozen anyway. I am running out of time to do my repairs. In the dream, I recall feeling like I had forgotten that this happens, that the entire room of the space station freezes, and I quick need to finish my task before I'm frozen solid. Already I can feel my hands turning into blocks of ice, so I move quickly into an adjoining room to take care of an unspecific task that requires the computer terminal. I have no clue what happened to the whole allen key project between the point at which I left the garage, and the point at which the freeze timer started counting down.

Then I realize there's an alarm going off, in addition to the alarm that's already sounding and warning of imminent freeze in the cryogenic room. The second alarm denotes the arrival of an intruder in the space station. I wasn't afraid at this point, it wasn't really a nightmare, but I did feel an overwhelming sense of urgency. There was some piece of information in the computer terminals, and also in my own body (because, although I didn't know it until this point in the dream, I am actually a cyborg), and this intruder is going to try to steal the info.

The intruder breaks into the computer room. It is a four-limbed robot, built rather like a small car with a face shaped like a triangular wedge of cheese, though of course not colored yellow. I try to fight it, but the freezing process has progressed really far by now, and my limbs are nearly entirely frozen solid. I'm moving quite slowly. I try to batter the intruder alien robot with my frozen arm, which achieves nothing, and the robot paralyzes me somehow. I fall to the ground, and watch as it hacks me. Yes, "hacks" my own internal programming.

First, I watch as it scrolls through a complete list of every test question I have ever answered in my life. This takes something like four seconds in the dream. Don't get me wrong, I don't actually think I saw every question, but in the dream that's what was happening.

The robot realizes that this isn't the info it's looking for, and continues hacking, finally finding what it wants. All I see is a huge brown expanse with trees in the background, though mostly grey stone in the foreground. I have failed someone/something in not protecting this image, somehow. I feel sad. The robot leaves me there, paralyzed, but not before implanting me with a virus.

Now things get really strange.

As I watched the robot's actions while it hacked me, I'm now watching what's happening inside me as the virus does its work. My internal components are all made of oak wood, a tangle of branches and green leaves. The virus changes all of my oak into birch with yellow leaves, and I'm helpless to stop this from happening. The change travels along each branch, changing me into a birch tree instead of an oak tree. This is really distressing in the dream.

Suddenly, Kristina arrives in the computer room. She managed to avoid getting caught by the robot, and reverse hacks me. The original oak inside me is gone, but she manages to reverse the "internal birching" process by switching to a willow tree (her own internal set up, apparently). This saves me from the virus. My relief was immense. I still remember the image of willow tree material rushing down the branches and replaces the birch material.

As she's finishing the "curing" process, she says to me, and I quote (because I made sure to definitely write this down), "this only worked because Obama messed up and gave me the wrong kind of birth control."

I nod. "Thank goodness," I say. And then we get up to go hunt down this freaking robot that's broken into the space station, and then...

Then my alarm went off.

I hopped out of bed and instantly wrote down as much as I could remember.

Thursday, July 18, 2013

Thoughts From an Airplane at 2 am, and Straight on Till Morning

I took a red eye to North Carolina. We departed Denver at 12:15 am. I normally pick an aisle seat for the leg room. This time I was optimistic that I'd be able to sleep on the plane, an infrequent occurrence for me. So, I chose a window seat instead. I thought to lean against the wall, and have enough support to relax my neck and back. Alas. I just don't fit in those seats, window or aisle.

I slept in fits and starts, no longer than ten minutes at a time, always waking with a paralyzing crick in my neck. I so wanted to sleep...and so I'd sit there, leaning against the wall, staring out of the window. I remember the haze and disorientation, brought about by my emotional state over XXXXX and the delirium of sleep depravation. I remember seeing many things in that half awake state that caused me both alarm and wonder. I remember wishing I could take out my computer right then, and write about what I saw, and how I felt. Too tired.

We arrived in Charlotte. I had three hours, so I found a piece of floor and passed out immediately. When I woke, the urge to write about what I had seen out the window was still quite strong, but I didn't have the presence of mind for a real entry, so instead I scribbled some lines in my notebook, things I hoped would remind me later on of what I had wanted to share.

I find this amusing, because my notes are a little strange. Here's what I wrote, with explanations to follow:

Thoughts From the Air Blog Post

  • a blink away from sleep
  • isolation
  • red eye flights
  • indigestion
  • missing XXXXX
  • too big for curvature of plane 
  • lightning @ night w/ stars
  • sun rise
  • moon too bright
  • glow of lights on ground through haze
  • crick in the neck
  • computer chips from the top
  • other plane goes by
  • sound + feel of the engines
  • cell towers breaking above clouds so tall
  • I'm so tall I can't see out the puddle jumper window
  • sleeping on the floor of the airport
Some of these require no explanation, but others might be difficult to decipher. Too big for curvature of plane is referring to the fact that I'm too tall for when the wall starts to curve towards the ceiling, thereby forcing awkward neck/shoulder/head/wall angles. 

The glow of lights on the ground were very blury, seen through ultra-thin clouds in the haze of night, and made me feel like I was gazing into the depths of the ocean. The plane itself was under water, and faintly bioluminescent creatures were slowly floating by our vessel. It was a supremely peaceful sensation. I wished I could see the glowing lifeforms up close, fractal patterns of hidden life drifting through the dark.

Computer chips from the top refers to my observation that, from the right height and in the dim light of a sun not-quite-risen, the patchwork of rooftops and parking lots and lawns looks surprisingly similar to a circuit board. 

I can't for the life of me remember why I felt such a sense of Eureka! when that other plane flew right past us, not so far away, at 3 in the morning. What was the insight? Was it all imagined? I know I felt it; I can't recall why.

I do vividly remember the moon being absurdly bright, blindingly bright. For whatever reason, it didn't occur to me to close the shade.

But the two coolest parts of the flight were the cell towers and the lightning storm.

First, the cell towers. The sun still wasn't exactly "up," but it was bright enough to see almost normally from the window. Low clouds obscured the ground, so it was impossible to see how high we were. A grey and puffy ocean stretched below us, and I stared at the monochromatic nothingness, hoping my drool wasn't leaving permanent marks on the upholstery.  Suddenly, I could see a substantial portion of the top of three cell towers (I assume that's what they were), their red lights winking silently against the grey pre-morning. For whatever reason, the sight made me feel like I had been transported a thousand years in the future, that we were in a place reminiscent of Cloud City in Star Wars, and we'd land to find ourselves surrounded by hover cars, jet packs, and robots. Too see something so artificial poking so high in the sky, and be unable to see anything else...I find this very difficult to explain.

Second, the lightning storm. During that part of the flight, I could not see any clouds. It was too dark. But there were plenty of stars. The sensation of flying at the very ceiling of the world was quite strong. I saw a flash, and then more of them. And for ten minutes or so, we flew to the right of an enormous thunderhead. We were far from it. I don't know how far, but my hand in the window covered the parts of the storm I could see whenever the lightning came. Without the lightning, you'd never know it was there. Sky and cloud masked each other. It's one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen: an entire thunderstorm in the middle of the night, sitting with it at the same level in the sky, encapsulated by a clear view of the stars all around. I think it was the juxtaposition between completely clear sky and storm that touched me so deeply. How I long to have been able to take a picture. There is no way to do it justice. It was mesmerizing. Incredible. Defies description, truly, because what words do we have to explain that feeling of deep beauty and oneness that comes subtly upon us, and leaves us gaping?

The Sanguine Ache

A captured heart
Willingly enthralled
Struggles to let the huntress know
She's caught something

Thursday, July 11, 2013

Like Ships in the Night

Here in Wilmington, NC, I have taken to walking along the beach late at night. I know that trudging through the surf, by myself, at 11 pm is maybe just a little emo, but it truly is glorious being out there then. It's also quite dark. Yeah, I know, it's night, of course it's dark. But if you're in the city at night and walking down the street, there are street lamps every now and then, and parking lots and buildings and whatever else. But on the sand....half the world is ocean, which is totally dark, and the rest, if you're in the right place, are darkened condos and the like.

Point is, it's pretty dark out there. The stars and sliver of moon behind the haze of light clouds make it, if not quite erie, then at least a bit mysterious. I don't know what the mystery is, you could take your pick, I'm sure: what kind of shell is this? how old was that girl/woman who just walked past me? does anyone ever get mugged on the beach in the middle of the night? do two strangers ever meet on the beach in the middle of the night and sneak off behind the dunes? could that happen to me? are there sharks out there? what would I do if a tidal wave hit, besides die? why are we here? etc.

It's also cooler than in the day, and there are very few people. Other eccentric walkers like myself, no doubt. And I wonder who they are. The beach is a very easy place to slip into judging people. Everyone's nearly naked. There's the dumb jock, the apish IT guy, the crazy foreigners, the vapid supermodels...but of course all of that is nonsense. You have no idea. Still, it's different during the day. But at night, you pass someone, and as I alluded to earlier, it's dark. You haven't the fainest clue who they are. You could probably walk by your best friend and miss each other. Makes you wonder how much else you miss. Who are these other souls, out walking the beach in the middle of the night by themselves? What would they say if I said hi? It's a useful kind of solitude...refreshing. Pure. A little crazy, maybe. But in some ways, that solitude is just another kind of connection--a connection to the other people like me, perhaps, passing each other like ships in the night.